


Little by little

by Matloc



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4456232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matloc/pseuds/Matloc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A name is all Kuroko needs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little by little

The world is changing, little by little.

He first notices it in joined hands. A couple walking past him, living in a world of their own, and Kuroko thinks he sees a glimpse of it when his gaze strays to their entwined fingers. He stops in his tracks, ignoring Nigou’s whine and the ensuing tug at the leash. In the auspicious singularity of that moment, where worlds collide and the seas are flipped to sky, he remembers.

There’s a name that he recalls and Kuroko’s left breathless.

This is not the only time Kuroko’s caught off guard by the world itself. Not when one day he’s heading to class and he sees a bed of scarlet roses at the entrance to his university.

“Beautiful,” he says to no one in particular. He wonders when these were added here.

“Eh, is this your first time seeing them, Tetsu-kun?” he hears Momoi say. “We’ve had this rose garden for years now.”

No reply comes after it.

Just like that, a part of the world changes, and Kuroko’s eyes automatically begin to stray to those flowers, glistening red and beautiful, whenever he’s nearby.

A name pops up in his head again.

Another time he’s at the store and there’s a date in his mind. He can’t put a finger on it, but he’s tempted to put a blank reminder just in case. A young girl almost bumps into him on his way out and his world tilts when he sees her browsing through a shelf full of assorted chocolates. Has that particular shelf always been there?

He gets his answer when he fishes his phone out of his pocket later on to answer a text and the current date is burnt into his mind.

_February 13th, 2015._

It’s not that his world stopped turning. Just that there’s a subtle shift, enough to see vacant cracks fill up with things that were usually brushed off. In their resounding ordinariness he finds something special.

He finds a name again.

He finds it again and again and again, in the coy smiles between a couple sitting under a tree, in the hibiscus drooping behind the window of a flower shop, in soft acoustic that sometimes plays on the radio, in a whiff of cologne with an oddly familiar scent, and he’s bewitched with a spell that unwinds sights he never sees in the perpetual state of things around him. Things he has never paid attention to before now catch his eye and pull out a name from his mind.

Today he’s sitting at a cafe and once more he finds something he wasn’t looking for. There’s a woman sitting two tables in front of him, and when she brings up a hand to brush away a stray lock, Kuroko catches it. The glint of steel and the glitter of gemstone, a gorgeous juxtaposition of fantasy and dreams and lifelong promises so lackluster to him in the past.

Today’s different, the world has changed and the ruby in the woman’s wedding ring cuts a name into his vision. What he sees makes him laugh softly in sheer surprise.

“Tetsuya?” asks Akashi Seijuurou from the right end of the table, holding up the hardcover of Crime and Punishment. They met years ago during freshman year, the single class they shared under Japanese History—indubitably the class he’d enjoyed the most. For a reason he hadn’t realized until just now.

Until the world around him began to change and he finally saw—

“Nothing,” Kuroko says. He waits for a moment. "It seems I’m in love with Akashi-kun.“

The glasses on the table tremble with the weight of Akashi’s book as it slips from his hands and lands on the mahogany with a heavy thud. Red eyes cast a troubled look in his direction, but Kuroko hardly feels guilty about the word "beautiful” being the sole thing etched in his mind as he stares back at Akashi.

“What are you saying all of a sudden?” Akashi asks, completely bewildered. To Kuroko it sounds like a scolding.

So he repeats it, “I love you, Akashi-kun.”

Akashi’s looking at him with wide eyes now as though Kuroko just recited the first hundred digits of pi.

Which is hardly a valid comparison when Kuroko finds the words as simple as getting out of bed everyday.

“Do you realize what you’re saying, Tetsuya?” Akashi rephrases, and Kuroko’s starting to feel offended at how condescending the man sounds.

“Of course,” he defends in his usual monotone. “I love you.” This time he says it with a tacit rebelliousness that Akashi almost expects it to be followed with a tantrum of sorts.

Instead they spend a questionable amount of time just staring at each other, Akashi looking progressively more amused by how Kuroko’s close to glaring at him now, silently communicating a stubborn challenge to rudely question his feelings again.

A challenge Akashi passes in favor of a more fulfilling route. He tucks a bookmark in the middle of the pages and closes the book shut, turning towards Kuroko with a smile.

“I suppose it’s only fair I bestow a reply to your heartfelt confession.”

Kuroko frowns. “I wasn’t asking for a reply—”

The rest of his protest dies in a kiss Akashi skillfully steals from his lips.

 


End file.
